Return Of `Jonah': Radicalism That Doesn't Show Its Age

December 22, 2000|By DEBORAH HORNBLOW; Courant Staff Writer

Before ``The Return of the Secaucus Seven'' (1980) and the commercial hit ``The Big Chill'' (1983), there was Alain Tanner's 1976 sly French-Swiss social comedy, ``Jonah Qui Aura 25 en L'An 2000'' (``Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000'').

With the waning days of the year 2000 upon us, Hartford's Real Art Ways has brought back the highly acclaimed ensemble film to see how it holds up.

If the low-budget, hand-hewn, post-hippie chronicle creaks in a few spots, and its politics date to 1968, its social agenda and the yearnings of its motley assembly of friends and lovers seem largely as relevant as they did in the disco days. Protesters who railed against corporate America at the Battle in Seattle (and the young robbers who allegedly robbed Filene's in Manchester recently and claimed that their crime was ``about corporate America'') will find compatriot spirits here.

Tanner's comedy introduces a collection of bright, unconventional 30-somethings who are eking out lives in Geneva. All are caught between the youthful ideals of the '60s and their need to function as adults in a far-from-ideal world in the '70s. Their commitment to radicalism and social justice notwithstanding, they have grown into jobs as clerks, teachers, secretaries and, in the film's funniest joke, a farm worker who shovels horse manure.

There's Marco (Jacques Denis) the unorthodox teacher who uses blood sausage, a butcher knife and a metronome to instruct his class in history; Marie (Miou-Miou), a grocery store clerk-cum-Robin Hood who steals to help elderly pensioners; Max (Jean-Luc Bideau), a disaffected copy editor who hopes to thwart a commercial land development deal; Madeleine (Myriam Mezieres), the bank secretary who helps Max and is a devotee of tantric sex; and Mathieu (Rufus), the unemployed intellectual whose wife, Mathilde (Myriam Boyer), supports the family by working in a factory and wants more children.

The characters' names, which all begin with the letter ``M,'' constitute one of the film's first amusements. It may be designed to suggest the anonymity and sameness that are a result of capitalism -- a world in which we are all rendered nameless cogs in a machine.

The film has a naturalistic, verite feel as Tanner follows his characters about the sometimes humdrum business of their daily lives -- eating meals, teaching in a classroom and shoveling in a barnyard. But these seemingly casual scenes illustrate -- and provide rich metaphor for -- the characters' accommodations.

The film may seem a bit slow by contemporary jump-cut standards, but it gets where it's going. And if Tanner's transitions are nothing less than rough, and there is little attention to composition within the frame, ``Jonah'' has an engaging, freewheeling spirit that underscores the moods of the characters. The feel of guerilla filmmaking is also quite apt for ``Jonah'''s themes.

Tanner's script won top honors from the National Society of Film Critics award in '76 and it gets funnier the more you think about it.

The film ends with a tone of amused melancholy brought on by the reality that the idealism of the '60s has been mostly undercut by the capitalist agenda the film's characters sought to avoid.

In a light-handed and utterly natural way, Tanner's film brings home the truth that the spirit of radicalism survives, but sometimes only in dinner-table discussions.

JONAH QUI AURA 25 ANS EN L'AN 2000 (``Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000), directed by Alain Tanner, written by Tanner and John Berger, from Berger's novel; music by Jean-Marie Senia; cinematography by Renato Berta; editing by Brigitte Sousselier; produced by Yves Gassre and Yves Peyrot. Featuring Miou-Miou, Roger Jendly, Jea-Luc Bideau, Myriam Boyer, Jacques Denis and Myriam Mezieres. A New Yorker Films release. Rated PG with female nudity, sexual situations and adult themes. * * *